Engineers & Political Imperative

It's high time for the world to hear the cool, objective voice of the engineer in future arguments about clean air, clean water, and climate.

PARIS — On EE Times, we often report on EVs and hybrids, Energy Star-approved home appliances, and a host of greener chips designed to lower power consumption for everything from mobile devices to stationary systems.

Of course, as much as these greener technologies make us all feel good about ourselves (exactly how their marketers want us to feel), many astute members of the EE Times Community can't help but see a few brown spots on the green theories. Not using gas doesn't necessarily reduce an EV's total carbon footprint. Think about what it takes to generate the electricity that feeds it. Without a greener electric grid, it's hard for EVs to reap benefits.

Last summer, for example, Climate Central reported that 18 states, including Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico, Michigan, and Ohio, still heavily depend on coal or have virtually no renewables and little nuclear power in their electricity mixes. "Driving and recharging an electric car in these states is worse for the climate than burning gasoline in a conventional hybrid or high-mileage car... even when manufacturing emissions are excluded." In Colorado, for example, a Toyota Prius hybrid is more environmentally conscientious than a Nissan Leaf or Tesla S.

Does that mean the engineering community's efforts to develop and advance EV technologies don't accomplish much more than helping marketers sell more EVs? The most cynical view is that EVs are for consumers who want to make a statement about their green consciousness. But this morning, I came across a Worldwatch Institute report, "State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?" The institute said in a press release on the report:

Many environmentalists today miss the broader political picture by advocating for small day-to-day "green living" acts that in reality are far more symbolic than they are effective. The truth is that most people are proponents of a cleaner environment, safer products and labor conditions, and a better functioning democracy -- they are just not actively working together for real change.

Whoa.

This argument is not exactly music to liberal ears, but it's in line with what some of the EE Times readers have been saying for years. The conclusions of the Worldwatch Institute differ markedly from the often apolitical statements of the engineering community. "The missing ingredient is not more individual eco-perfectionists, but rather collective engagement for sweeping political and economic change," the release said.

In my years at EE Times, I've often heard my elders (and now my youngers) advise me, "Leave politics out of engineering." This is a publication for informing the engineering community, not for political discourse. And yet I've always believed that, if we really want engineers to matter to society, engineers can't pretend to live in a world without politics.

"Small actions are a fine place to start, but they are a terrible place to stop," Annie Leonard, a contributing author to the report and co-director of The Story of Stuff, said in the release.

Framing environmental deterioration as the result of poor individual choices -- littering, leaving the lights on when we leave a room, failing to carpool -- not only distracts us from identifying and demanding change from the real drivers of environmental decline. It also removes these issues from the political realm to the personal, implying that the solution is in our individual choices rather than in better policies, business practices, and structural context.

I understand that engineers, generally speaking, remain squeamish about politics and are reluctant to get involved in any sort of activism. But here's the thing: When we all know how high the stakes are and how slow the global response has been, isn't it time for the engineering community -- whose most important tasks include developing technologies to lower carbon emission -- to take a stand and speak up?

I'm not sure if the engineering community could ever work up the enthusiasm for even a mini-March on Washington. But I think it's high time for the world to hear the cool, objective voice of the engineer in arguments about clean air, clean water, and climate.

Of course, if you're one of those engineers who believe climate change is a hoax, let's hear from you, too -- with a little proof.

It definitely merits research. There's no doubt there. That is the great thing about science, we don't just write things off (or on), we persue and research until we can trace a solid and complete line. Yay science!

Yes, this is a very good article. I need more time to gather my thought here... too much that I would like to say. Hope there will be a follow-up article. Any time there is an article that relate to the climate and the environment, you are going to get a lot of comments.

"My point is that even if biomass increases as a result of AGW, and assuming we didn't negate this via land use changes, it would only be a chance of at most a few tens of GT."

Oh, sorry, on re-reading, I thought you were talking about CO2 mass as a result of global warming. Now I see you were talking about vegetation mass.

But still, exactly how much extra CO2 sequestration the vegetation out there today can handle is not obvious to me, but the doomsdayers are saying, essentially, NONE. (That's BEFORE any reforestation effort.)

"Your 750 GT and my 560 GT figure are different concepts. 750 GT "passes through" the 560 GT of living biomass each year."

Agreed. Since we are focusing only on CO2, the comparison has to be how much CO2 the ecosystem processes each day (or year, or whatever), vs how much CO2 humans add to this daily or annual total that must be processed. We are talking about CO2 sequestration RATES, not quantities at equilibrium.

"My point is that even if biomass increases as a result of AGW, and assuming we didn't negate this via land use changes, it would only be a chance of at most a few tens of GT."

Based on what? The equilibrium point for atmospheric CO2 is likely to change with different average temps, I have found articles that describe that CO2 content varies over geological ages, and how much CO2 sequestration different types of plants provide. Also, how much CO2 is emitted from decaying plants. So there's not a lot of doubt that ambient temps will affect the equilibrium level. It's kind of self evident, right?

"Since we are emitting around 10GT a year and growing, at best this change could only offset a few year's worth of emissions."

I don't understand this point t all. To repeat both parts of my argument. If you have a mechanism that processes 740 GT per year, say, and then you feed it 750 GT per year (or whatever small added increase), unless that mechanism is open loop, it will compensate for the extra. We ALREADY KNOW that plant growth is stimulated with extra CO2, over the amtospheric content. So to buy into this notion that the CO2 sequestration mechanism is open loop, and can't process even 1 more GT of CO2 per year, doesn't make a lot of sense. (My bet is that even real 'climate scientists' don't believe this, but the clueless press uses that as a simplistic argument for gullible readers.)

Second part. Now on the other hand, assume that deforestation has been so severe that the ecosystem is truly unable to process an extra 10 or 20 GT CO2 per year, for whatever reasons (heat stress, lack of rain). Then add enough vegetation to sequester that extra 3 percent of CO2. Reforestation will change rainfall patterns too, in addition to adding CO2 sequestering plants. And of course, there's no reason to stop at 3 percent, even assuming you can be so precise in these matters. 3 percent is a tiny figure. Adding vegetation in the form of forests can only make the ecosystem that much more self regulating. It won't stop at just an extra 3 percent of sequestration capacity.

Don't forget that the doomsdayers are saying that ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution, things have been going to hell in a handbasket. You're now saying, even if we can compensate for 3 percent, what about when it gets to 6 percent. But that's not even been the discussion.

"I have no idea why you have this idea that anyone assumes 'closed loop'. Any serious climate model includes the effects you are citing. They are just small."

Wow, they must REALLY be small, if the small extra CO2 emissions, especially at the start of the Industrial Revolution, have been enough to throw the system out of whack. Remember, these rising CO2 levels, supposedly caused by humans, have been going on for 200 years, they claim. How much extra CO2 were we talking about, when this man-made catastrophe started? We're at 3 percent now. Must have been 0.003 percent, when the claims of human causes were supposedly already measurable?

There is a lot of CONJECTURE going on in climate science, and the real scientists say so. These aren't scientifically repeatable experiments, as in physics. Nor is there any reason why we should assume ourselves incapable of making any sense of this. We don't need to "just believe" in the simplistic general interest press explanations, any more than we should "just believe" in "creation science."

"Let's get the numbers right. Several sources available online seem to agree that the annual quantity of CO2 going through the ecosystem is 750 GT. And that what humans contribute to that annual quantity is around 3 percent, 3.1 percent or so. This is annual emissions, not total mass. Let's not mix apples and oranges."

Your 750 GT and my 560 GT figure are different concepts. 750 GT "passes through" the 560 GT of living biomass each year.

My point is that even if biomass increases as a result of AGW, and assuming we didn't negate this via land use changes, it would only be a chance of at most a few tens of GT. Since we are emitting around 10GT a year and growing, at best this change could only offset a few year's worth of emissions. It is simply impossible for your mechanism to save us, and it is unlikely to even help us, precisely because in practice we are losing biomass, not gaining it. Reversing that would be every bit as disruptive and costly as shutting down the coal plants, which is what we should really be doing.

I have no idea why you have this idea that anyone assumes "closed loop". Any serious climate model includes the effects you are citing. They are just small.

I afraid I haven't got the time to consider every argument. The claim that rises in CO2 are more "coincidence than a cause and effect" is a standard denialist argument. It's all good to be skeptical, but it's validity you could easily verify yourself with a bit of googling (it's wrong, of course*). Previous hot periods were caused by changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun; this lead to the oceans releasing CO2, which lead to the earth heating up even faster. Consequently, CO2 lagged temperature. This time, the initial effect is not a change in the earth's orbit, but the rapid and massive increase in CO2 in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. So, previously is was a chicken-and-egg situation; this time the egg definitely came first.

*I say "of course" because the idea that we as engineers can find fault in another person's field is as absurd as a climate scientist being able to find fault in ours.

"My specific point was that, as CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen by 1/3 in the past couple of centuries, the feedback mechanism you allege either has not kicked in or must have a very long time constant. You have no addressed this point, but instead have raised a load of other points instead."

Is this point significant? One article I read claims that rapid rise in CO2 levels during the peak warm periods is normal, but would not show up in ice core records. And one of the articles I posted addresses that point too, calling it more of a coincidence than a cause and effect.

"if figure two of your last link doesn't show that artic sea ice is reducing, I'm a Dutchman."

How so? Figure 2 clearly shows that the extent of Arctic ice in 2013 (blue-green) is closest to the 1981-2010 average than any other year except maybe 2008. Keep in mind that the recent prediction was that Arctic sea ice would be gone by 2013. And Antarctic sea ice growing bit by bit, for the past 35 years. I'm not about to say that "climate change" is a hoax, but that doesn't mean I have to buy the new orthodoxy like an acolyte, either.

"humans emit about 100x the amount of CO2 that volcanic activity emits, so the volcano link is nonsense (and of course volcanically emitted CO2 is part of the natural carbon-cycle; mankind's emissions are extra)."

So what, even if this is true? The intent in citing such a statistic APPEARS to be that human contributions swamp all others. I certainly never claimed that volcanoes were the, or a, major source of CO2, just one of the *many* natural sources. And at the same time, no one denies that natural sources of CO2 outweigh human CO2 emissions by a huge amount. This is not even being debated. Human contribution, over a given time period, is just above 3 percent of the total.

"we must not conflate the fact that we rely on the greenhouse affect to raise the temperature of our planet sufficiently to support life (an effect to which water contributes significantly) with the fact that our emissions of CO2 are adding to this raising the temperature still further."

I made no such arguments, though. My main argument is that all of the doomsday hand wringing hinges on the assumption that CO2 was previously in unstable equilibrium. All it took was a small amount of additional human contribution to upset the applecart. That's my main objection. Perhaps this sounds likely to those unschooled in the design of stable systems, but this sort of simplistic assumption SHOULD make engineers wonder. No? And furthermore, I suggest that a massive effort at reforestation would accommodate that extra 3 percent of CO2, IF it's true that our human contribution drove the previous garden of eden state over the edge.

My specific point was that, as CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen by 1/3 in the past couple of centuries, the feedback mechanism you allege either has not kicked in or must have a very long time constant. You have no addressed this point, but instead have raised a load of other points instead. This seems to be a common tactic.

To address you points:

reticence, qualification etc by scientists is a good thing. It is a good thing that they are far less sure of themselves than denialists.

we must not conflate the fact that we rely on the greenhouse affect to raise the temperature of our planet sufficiently to support life (an effect to which water contributes significantly) with the fact that our emissions of CO2 are adding to this raising the temperature still further. You also need to bear in mind that the atmosphere is saturated with water so if water has any part to play at all, it is to make temperatures rise even faster (because the atmosphere will be able to hold more water as its temperature rises).

humans emit about 100x the amount of CO2 that volcanic activity emits, so the volcano link is nonsense (and of course volcanically emitted CO2 is part of the natural carbon-cycle; mankind's emissions are extra).

if figure two of your last link doesn't show that artic sea ice is reducing, I'm a Dutchman.